Circular, roughly the diameter of a car tyre, and only 17.5 centimetres tall, it has a flat underside and a shallow lipped depression hollowed into its upper face. It does not look like much at first glance, but it is the kind of object that rewards a second look.

According to architect and heritage specialist Denis Power, the fragment is most likely part of a column capital, the carved block that sits at the top of a column and helps distribute the weight of whatever the column once supported. That interpretation makes the depression on the upper surface easier to read; it would have received the base of an arch or the lowest stone of a structure bearing down from above. The fragment is sandstone, a material used widely in Kerry ecclesiastical buildings, and its dimensions suggest it came from a building of some ambition. What that building looked like, when it was constructed, or how far the fragment has travelled from its original position within the church complex, is not recorded. It survives now as an orphaned architectural detail, separated from any context that might explain it fully.